(10)Final Fantasy VIII vs (2)Super Mario World 2015
Results Round Two Monday, November 23, 2015 Ulti's Analysis There were two normal matches during the round 2 Undertale rally, this one and Sonic 2/Uncharted 2. Or rather, "normal" in the sense that the only real change was inflated vote totals. During round 1, Final Fantasy 8 made a pretty funny increase in percentage against Vice City once Undertale showed up. This, paired with Animal Crossing literally getting cuts on Mario World en route to a ridiculous percentage bleed, gave a very slim hope that Final Fantasy 8 might pull a miracle in this match. That hope was short-lived however, as Mario was well above 65% at the beginning of the poll and showed no bleed to speak of overnight once Square's best time hit. Sure there was a small bleed of 2-3%, but then the morning vote hit and erased it all. Then once the Undertale rally happened, it massively favored Super Mario World. There would be no hijinx here en route to Mario World getting a very easy 68-32 win. To say the Undertale/Mario World hype was insane after this happened doesn't even begin to cover it. If you went by Board 8, you would think it was the only match in round 3 at all! Shout-out to FF8, by the way. Coming out after FF7 was an impossible spot to be in, but FF8 was still a damn good game. It just suffered from "trying too hard because I'm following a legend" syndrome. Unfortunately round 2 is often about separating midcarders from contenders, and FF8 was definitely a midcarder going up against a contender. Ctes' Analysis After last round, there were people believing that Final Fantasy VIII would get to look really good today as a result of rally spillover. Final Fantasy VIII got to destroy Vice City more than it would've last round while Animal Crossing made Super Mario World bled percentage like crazy. I'm sure nobody expected Final Fantasy VIII to win today, just look good going out. Well, while Super Mario World definitely had the board vote, it seemed like this match would've had Super Mario World winning with about 63% under normal conditions. Super Mario World rose quite a bit when the rally kicked it. It wasn't as heavily favored as RBY and Sonic 2, but it wasn't close either. Turns out they just really love Animal Crossing and Pokemon on tumblr. It was assumed they didn't care for Mario, but that's not correct, they just have higher preferences, which the Mario games also faced. Apparently, it doesn't matter that Super Mario World is before the time of the average tumblr user, it's enough that it's Mario. Maybe the same doesn't apply for Final Fantasy VIII, if it's from before your time, well, you probably don't know the characters outside of Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy VIII probably only did as well as it did last round, because Grand Theft Auto is the last thing they care for there. That taken into consideration, it's actually somewhat sad Final Fantasy VIII didn't do better, but I guess they vote for games they love more than anti-vote. Final Fantasy VIII joins the large bunch of Final Fantasy games with a very predictable path this contest. Only VII, VI and IX had any real doubt in their paths of the eight of them that were in the contest. That also means four Final Fantasy games had an easy round 1 match and then lost easily in round 2, Final Fantasy VIII being the first of the four. Not that exciting outside of a cool 8-0 round 1 result! Final Fantasy VIII definitely used to be above IX in strength, but I believe that is no longer the case at all. It's not really VIII falling, it's just that IX is being loved a lot by old time fans all of a sudden. I'm honestly not quite sure why. It's a shame that VIII gets to only do about 7% better than Animal Crossing of all things on Super Mario World. While there is a clear and excusable explanation, it looks pretty sad. Super Mario World is an elite game on this site, it would've especially been this year since it's the Year of SNES, but it had just the bracket spot to get screwed by outside forces as much as possible. Things were looking really bad for Super Mario World next round. There might have been a few believers, but I think it was mostly people desperately hoping for a miracle. I was too, Super Mario World is a top 5 to me and that defines my nostalgia. I hated to see it draw the rally force of the year when it could've been a leading force of its dominating console along with Chrono Trigger and A Link to the Past. I didn't believe it stood a chance next round though. That Super Mario World would at least look respectable going out was the best thing to hope for as a fan of it. External Links * Match Updates * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2015 Contest Matches